


The Making of a Villain

by MabtheWinterQueen



Series: Retold and/or Modernized Fairytales [1]
Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale), Cinderella - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, Gen, POV First Person, Romance is Secondary and Background, Stepmother POV, Stepsisters' POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 21:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16730553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MabtheWinterQueen/pseuds/MabtheWinterQueen
Summary: Everyone knows the story of Cinderella - of the girl forced into servitude who eventually had her happily ever after. But do we know the stories behind the story? No character is one- or two-dimensional, and no villain truly believes they're the villain of their own story.





	The Making of a Villain

**Author's Note:**

> The stepmother and sisters are named in this story. Henrietta is the stepmother's name, the nice stepsister's name is Adrianna, and the "evil" stepsister's name is Isadora. This is a redemption arc as well as a story sympathetic to the villains, though it doesn't excuse their actions, nor is forgiveness given. An abuser changing is a great thing, but the abused does not have any obligation to forgive them.

Ever since I was a young girl, my childhood had been stained with the colour red. Red, my father’s angry face. Red, my blood. Red, the rims of my mother’s eyes. Red, my mother’s blood. Red, my father’s rage. Red, my own, blinding pain. Red, handprints on cheeks and lash-marks on backs. Red, the rims of my own eyes. Red, my lower body later in life.

 

            And brown. Brown, the dull of my skin ( _red on brown shouldn’t be so pretty_ ). Brown, the almost-black of my hair ( _yank, ow, pain, hurts_ ). Brown, the mud of my eyes ( _no, please, don’t make me look, I don’t want to see_ ). Brown, the dirt on my clothing ( _little dirt girl, dirty girl, muddy girl, worthless as soil_ ).

 

            There was no escape from his anger. No escape from the teasing. No relief, in this life or in the next. Until he died when I was twelve and left us in debt, scrounging for money. I was forced to work, along with my little brother. I became a maid. I worked as one for ten years until I managed to catch the eye of a handsome young man. I loved him with all my heart (and that he was a baron didn’t hurt). We were married not two weeks later and had five children together.

 

            The first one, a little girl whom I dubbed Pearl Ivy, after my mother, died of pneumonia when she was four. We were heartbroken, Alain and I. A year later, I gave birth to a boy named Rakel. He was our pride and joy, and I was perhaps a bit too overprotective of him. When he was five, I had his little brother, Ansel. He was take-charge, and definitely the one to look after. Much to my dismay, Rakel dismissed his high-up life with us and got married to a young woman from a neighboring country, moving there to be with her. Ansel was born with a heart problem that would go on to kill him when he was thirteen.

 

            I was terrified when, two years after Ansel’s death, I was discovered to be pregnant. Alain assured me that my fears were unjustified, but after having two children die and one abandon us, I was convinced that it was my mothering that had driven them to leave me.

 

            When Adrianna Lucrecia was born, I was stricken by how little she looked like me. She had her father’s pale skin, ginger-brown hair, and blue-green eyes. Her sister, Isadora Maria, was my fixation, however. With my dark hair and skin only a shade lighter than my own, I realized that she was the first of my children to look so much like me. She became the child I never was. I spoiled her and, I admit, may have neglected Adrianna in order to do so because I was so infatuated with the idea that I could live through Isadora. I fear that this is what pushed her away from me and toward the comfort of Eleanora.

 

            Status and power became so important to me. Both were denied to me in my youth, but they would not be denied to my daughters, if I had any say in anything.

 

            I groomed Isadora to be the perfect lady. I taught her to be beautiful, poised, talented, charming, witty, submissive, demure, and, inadvertently, spoiled and bratty. I was so delighted at the opportunity of a second childhood that I missed how awful she became. She teased her sister beyond normalcy. She was rude to the servants who, once upon a time, would have been me. She sneered at anyone she considered beneath her, or who, she thought, weren’t as good at anything as she was. I taught my daughter to be the rich snob I had once so despised, and I was too blind to see it.

 

            I admit my mistakes. Lord knows my husband knew. He was always pointing it out, and I was too proud to say uncle.

 

            Alain died when my girls were twelve. He found out too late that Ansel’s heart defect was because of one he had himself. I was devastated. I mourned for months on end.

 

            Three years later, I met an intelligent, funny man who happened to be a widower himself. His wife of twenty years had died just a year before of pneumonia. We fell in love in record time and were married. I inherited the title of Duchess.

 

            His daughter, a charming, witty, and beautiful girl named Eleanora, was very kind to us, though I was initially quite cold to her. It was not that I disliked her; it was her great resemblance to her late mother that bothered me. I knew that it was irrational; I would always love Alain, and that did not interfere with my love for Johann. But I was paranoid from years of being unwanted. I was afraid that he would always prefer his first wife to me. I was scared that I would never be enough.

 

            I warmed to her, though, as she proved to be quite difficult to hate. She had a bit of a fascination with animals, talking to them like they were friends, often offering to do the servants’ work when it came to milking the cows and gathering eggs. This habit irked me a bit; who would choose to do dirty work when you were not forced to? The privilege boggled my mind, but I let it go.

 

            Then my new husband left on a business trip, never to return, and my life capsized. I was terrified of going back to living as a servant, barely surviving, barely making enough for my children. In my fear, I fired all of the servants, delegating their tasks to Eleanora and Adrianna and preparing Isadora to marry rich.

 

            All these many years later, I see how horribly I mistreated all of my children, but I’m afraid that in the moment, I thought myself quite reasonable.

 

            Perhaps that was my first mistake.


End file.
